The advent of the Internet has transformed consumer product shopping. More and more, consumers are ordering products on-line via the Internet for delivery to the home or place of business. For customer convenience, businesses offering Internet shopping or telephone ordering often provide delivery of purchased items at a time specified by the consumer. The delivery time selected by the consumer must generally be chosen within a specified time window and the items are delivered by the business at any time within that particular window. FIG. 1, for example, shows diagrammatically a typical selection of time windows conventionally offered for a particular day for delivery of consumer products. The available time windows follow each other sequentially; for example 7:00 to 9:00 a.m., 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. and 11:00 to 1:00 p.m.
Convenience and dependability are the two hallmarks of a successful product delivery service. Because individual consumers have jobs and other commitments that make it difficult for them to wait at home for extended periods of time to receive a delivery, it is essential that distributors have the ability to make a delivery within a narrow time window and to be able to reliably deliver within the promised time window. Without this convenience and dependability, many customers will not use product delivery services. Instead, these customers will simply drive or walk to a retailer to purchase and pick up their needed goods in person.
Many times, a consumer is not available to take a delivery at a specific time within the available time window. For example, if a consumer is not available to take a delivery at 7:00 a.m., but would be available at 8:00 a.m. or 9:00 through 11:00 a.m., the consumer must wait until the 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. window to take delivery under conventional systems, which may not be as convenient as taking delivery at 8:00 a.m. Thus, if a consumer is unavailable to take a delivery at any specific time within a time window, it is not possible for the consumer to take delivery at any other time within that window. In other words, if a consumer is unavailable for only fifteen minutes within a two hour window, the consumer will have to wait until the next available two hour delivery time window for delivery.
A separate problem that arises in conventional delivery systems is that a delivery vehicle may be passing near the consumer's location within one time window, but may have to return to the location within another time window if the consumer has ordered products within that other time window, at considerable extra expense. This problem arises because the current model for dispatch of the routes is focused on time commitments and not the physical location of the destinations for the deliveries. The current models, therefore, result in drivers traveling excessive miles and incurring excessive down time in order to complete deliveries during their scheduled time windows, resulting in higher labor and delivery costs to the business and consumer. While current delivery solutions have attempted to optimize deliveries within smaller sequential time windows to give purchasers more choice, they have not solved many of the problems associated with conventional delivery models.
Consequently, there is a need for a method and system for delivering items to consumers that provides more flexibility to consumers to choose delivery times and more efficiency in executing the deliveries to the consumers. Such a system would reduce labor and delivery costs to the business and the consumer, increase the number of deliveries available, provide the consumer with better service and reduce consumer frustration with current delivery models.